


The (Many) Disasters Triumphs of the Mighty Thunder Thighs

by TheRumpledBook



Category: Original Work
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Car Accidents, Casual Sex, Death, Explicit Language, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person, Recreational Drug Use, Sex Work, Suicide Attempt, The Author has no idea what she's doing, The main character is an idiot and a bit of an asshole, Victim Blaming, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 05:00:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29869512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRumpledBook/pseuds/TheRumpledBook
Summary: Lots of people think that denial is a bad thing. That it’s a character flaw to stick your fingers in your ears and yell, “La-la-la-la-la! I can’t hear you,” while the universe taps you on the shoulder.But, if you’re careful, stubborn, and very, very determined, it will almost let you forget that you have superpowers.Almost.Eventually though, the universe gets tired of waiting on you to get your shit together, so it yanks your fingers out of your ears and punches you in the face.I started my week with a car fire.





	The (Many) Disasters Triumphs of the Mighty Thunder Thighs

**Author's Note:**

> So! This is a story I've had brewing in my head for at least...four, maybe five years? A few things:  
> 1\. I've done my best to research scientific, political, and factual aspects of this story to make it as plausible as possible, but we're still diving into a realm of fiction. If you see something that makes you go, "wait, that's just not a thing, AT ALL," please feel free to politely mention that in the comments -- I may change stuff as I go or redo this thing once it's actually truly done and I appreciate feedback!  
> 2\. The main character/narrator is an asshole, and not all of her opinions are the same as mine, so she may come off as an abrasive little shit. That being said...  
> 3\. I appreciate any constructive feedback and I'm writing this from the perspective of a Panromantic Ace, white, Cisgender fat woman. I'm going to try and be respectful of minority groups and if I fuck up with something, please feel free to tell me so I can fix it, or make my character fix it.  
> 4\. IFuckingLoveBees is the beta and he's the only reason I've gotten enough confidence together to actually post this, so massive thanks to him.  
> 5\. Thank you so much for reading, I hope you like it!

I don’t know where I thought my life was going, but I’m pretty sure it never included this line: “Spit out the pretty rocks or I’m going to pee on you.”

The thief I’m sitting on stops wiggling for a second. 

“You _wouldn’t_ ,” he snarls through gritted teeth. 

I shift my feet so his wrists are being ground into the asphalt and he winces, but keeps his teeth shut. 

“Try me fuck-wad. It’s been a long patrol and I had two red bulls an hour ago.”

 _“_ Fuck you. That’s disgusting.” He starts thrashing again.

I roll my eyes. “Keep it up, asshole. You’re making the need to pee even worse.”

He stills. “And if you pee and I don’t give the rings back?”

I shrug. “Then I’ll take out my tampon and shove it in your ear.”

He gags, then spits. A few jeweled rings glitter in their saliva, and I wish for a moment that had access to a DNA database and swab kit. I hate not knowing who this guy is.

I pocket the rings and get up and, predictably, he’s wiggled out of my grip and bolted before I’m fully standing. It’s a good thing he didn’t try to call my bluff—my bladder is aching and it’s a heavy flow day.

It occurs to me later that this is a really weird experience for most people, and I have to wonder if ten months is really long enough to be used to this shit.

Probably not.

*

_Ten Months Earlier..._

Lots of people think that denial is a bad thing. That it’s a character flaw to stick your fingers in your ears and yell, “La-la-la-la-la! I can’t hear you,” while the universe taps you on the shoulder. Personally, I think this is really unfair. Denial is great! It can get you out of lots of things. Don’t want to talk about your feelings? Deny you have them. Don’t want to read your essay out loud to the class? Put the paper back into your backpack and tell them you didn’t do the work. Don’t want to examine that puss-filled psychological wound at the back of your brain? Tell yourself you don’t care and wait for the inevitable brain aneurysm to erupt from stress and emotional constipation.

Denial gets liars elected to congress and keeps toxic couples together long enough to see their kids off to college. Denial is our friend! Denial will even let you ignore your own body. And, if you’re careful, stubborn, and very, _very_ determined, it will _almost_ let you forget that you have superpowers.

 _Almost_.

Eventually though, the universe gets tired of waiting on you to get your shit together, so it yanks your fingers out of your ears and punches you in the face. 

So I started my week with a car fire. I get off the bus, heading home, headphones on, minding my own damned business. Traffic is bumper to bumper, but the work day is over and I don’t have anything waiting for me but some deli cuts and a Netflix marathon, so I’m not bothered. Besides, I don’t waste money on cars, so traffic isn’t really my problem. I can smell something nasty burning, and there’s definitely some sirens coming up, but I don’t notice any of this until I come up to the blockage on the sidewalk.

The blockage is a knot of about twenty people staring at a burning car. No one’s helping, no one’s getting close. They’re just…gawking, kinda like a herd of cows chewing cud. Which is fair, I guess. Not a lot of car fires around, even in Vegas.

I look on with them for a moment, until I realize that there is a _person still in the car_ . A screaming, breathing, _living_ person. 

Let me paint a picture of what happened: Idiot A has made the mistake of texting and driving, thus swerving his car into the wall of a building. Idiot A is now very, very dead, being semi squished by the twisted metal. Idiot B—his buddy in the passenger seat—is still alive, very dazed, and now screaming out his window. Loudly. 

I understand the screaming, I do—but he is screaming _into my ear_ , loud enough I can hear him through my headphones. While I’m trying to help him.

“Would you fucking _shut up_ ?!” I shout, having run up to the door so his face is right next to mine. He’s panicking, pulling and tugging on his seat belt and banging his hands on the crumpled remains of a car door. I don’t think about what I’m doing, just reach out and _pull_ \--

The door comes off in my hand, and I fling it behind me. I don’t look, but it will occur to me later that it took an awfully long time to hear it land. The local news clips will show how it landed twenty feet behind me. 

Idiot B does not stop screaming. In fact, he gets louder.

This does not help me. I try to ignore him, focusing on the seatbelt and snarling when it won’t come undone as easily as the door.

“Fuck it,” I squeeze until the buckle clasp crumbles under my hand like stale chips.

Idiot B stops screaming.

I take this opportunity to finish removing him from the burning car, dumping him on the pavement and not thinking about how he weighed nothing in my arms or how _easy_ that all was. I duck around a couple of corners, dip into an alley way and take a moment to pat/slap out the fires on my clothes, focusing primarily on “ow, fuck, fire hurts,” rather than the “Holy fuck I’m on fire” parts. No one’s following me, and I get home on autopilot. 

The next day, I wake up in a pile of old red bull cans with the smell of smoke in my hair and leftover greasepaint from work on my arms. I groan and roll over, reaching out for my phone in the mess.

I open my news feed expecting to be able to scroll through local stories and check the weather, hoping desperately to forget yesterday ever happened.

The universe says, “Fuck that,” and shows me something else.

At the top of the page is a blurry snapshot of my ass above a lurid banner so colorful and bright, I feel my pupils contract just looking at it.

 _I WAS SAVED BY A FAT SHE-HULK_ my phone tells me. In the photo below that, the screaming Idiot B stares at me, still slightly singed at the edges and looking vaguely shell-shocked.

Apparently this is the absolute _limit_ of my ability to cope, because I promptly say “fuck-it” and instruct my phone to call out of work for the first time in my life. Roxanne will be irritated but hey, I’ve got, well, _weirder_ problems.

*

Of course, when I get up, it doesn’t get any better. I don’t know if I’m hyped up on adrenaline or just not paying attention, but I completely _demolish_ my kitchen. I open the fridge and the door comes off. I go for a poptart and the cupboard, the box, and the food all come apart in my hands. I try to gather up bits and pieces of pastry but when I try to put them in the toaster, my hand leaves a dent on the side. I feel like my world has been turned to glass, but I’m still hungry. 

I step back out of the kitchen, trying to breath deep and slow like the staff at West Hills made Dia do. In for six, hold for six, out for eight. In for six, hold for six, out for eight. It takes a while, but I manage to calm down enough to step back into the kitchen. I move slow and careful, keep my breathing on a count, and eventually I fumble my way around well enough to get some food. 

*

Six hours, four Choco-tacos, three pounds of steak, and one restless nap later, I am finally calm enough to stare at my ceiling and _think_. 

_In for six. Hold for six. Out for eight. In for six. Hold for six. Out for eight._

Okay. So. I am...I’m _strong_. And that means I can break shit. But doing that doesn’t seem to hurt me much, so maybe there’s more to it than just strength? I mean, I didn’t get winded from struggling with the car, I didn’t get any broken bones thrashing around the kitchen, and although I got a few cuts from the car, they were really shallow.

So I’m strong and…durable? Ish? Like, maybe the crash test rating between a Humvee and a Prius?

But how do I know what I’ve got? I mean, the strength isn’t...well...I mean, it’s not really _new_ , if I’m being honest, but I’m not sure if the durability is recent or not, so does this mean it’s like a video game—unlock the new skills as you level up?

How does one level up in real life?

So here’s my solution—before I go all mad scientist and figure out what exactly my limits are, I need to talk to someone. In particular, my grandma. But, she’s been kinda dead for the past eight years, so I’m going to have to improvise a bit.

I figure trying to break out an Ouija board and do a séance is a bit ridiculous, but I have reason to believe that I might be able to get myself to talk to her _another_ way.

With drugs.

See, back when we were both in high school, Dia was the most intensely high strung, anxiety ridden creature you’ve ever met. Then, after she graduated, Mom and Dad made her stay home for college as a kind of safety net, which was apparently a signal to her brain that she should become a crazy party girl instead of a psychotic over achiever. 

Dia wasn’t proud of this. She didn’t like thinking that our parents had wasted money on years of therapy and inpatient treatments just so she could go right back to self-destructive habits. So rather than call an Uber who would drop her off in front of the house so she could glow with shame under the porch light, she usually chose to call _me_ at the end of the night. And because I do actually love my sister, and because I could use it for blackmail later on, I would _occasionally_ agree to steal dad’s car, pick up her drunk ass from the middle of whatever insanity she’d gotten into, and drag her home to dump her into her bed.

One night, as I was pulling off her stripper heels and shoving her under the covers, I noticed a little white baggie had fallen out of her pants. I felt it was safe to assume that these were probably drugs, and since she’d been calling me a pretty kitty lady earlier, maybe they were hallucinogens?

Whatever they were, Dia hadn’t died from taking them, and I’ll admit I was curious. So I finished putting her to bed, locked myself in my own room, fired up my PlayStation, and took a pinch of powder out of the baggie to lick it off my fingers.

I spent the rest of the night thinking I was playing Zelda with my late uncle, only to realize when I came out of it the next morning that the console had been shut off for hours. It was hilarious, but not anything I’d felt a need to repeat.

Until now.

*

A few trips to the edges of a local nightclub yields me a shady looking guy who asks me what I want.

“I need to be so fucked up that I see dead people,” I tell him.

He looks at me like he’s not sure if I _need_ drugs or if I’m already _on_ them, but takes my money and sends me on my way with three little green pills. Delphi, he calls them; a drug that resembles a cross between peyote, shrooms, and a little LSD.

This is probably the stupidest decision I could be making, but I lock myself in my closet and start sucking on half of one of the tablets. It tastes disgusting, but eventually the walls start melting.

I look to my left: my tennis shoes are playing poker.

I look to my right: my jacket morphs into an eagle deepthroating a banana.

I look up.

Grandma Dooley hangs upside down from the ceiling like the worlds’ most prim and proper bat, her best church clothes flashing with images of gnomes.

“Hello Ruth,” she says. “Lets have a cup of tea.”

I smile.

*

Everyone has that one relative who seems larger than life. They act as a key stone to the family, and they leave a lasting impression on everyone they meet, even if it’s only for a second. Grandma Dooley was like that, but she left less of an impression, more of a giant face tattoo on our lives.

Grandma Ruthanne Dooley worked as a nurse, raising two sons on her own after her husband stroked out. After a forty-something-year long career, she retired and started volunteering with six charities and four shelters the following week. Every soup kitchen, rotary club meeting, clothing drive—she joined them all and ran each with an iron fist of Canadian manners and stubbornness. She dragged us to Mass every Sunday, and while you might get out of it if you had a fever over 102, come Wednesday evening you found your butt stapled to a pew again.

I hated every second of it, and so did she.

When I asked her about it, she’d just shrug and tap out another stick of nicotine gum.

“No one knows for sure if they’re a saint or sinner at heart until the Lord brings us home. But I like knowing that even if I’m hellbound, I’m remembered for what I did, not what I was.”

Grandma Dooley was also very, _very_ Canadian—she firmly believed that the answer to any crisis, form split ends to nuclear holocaust, was to sit down and have tea. I was always vaguely certain that this meant Canadians must be crazy, but the tea was good and there were usually cookies.

Grandma Dooley was also the only one I ever thought might prefer _me_ to my sister. Not that she didn’t love Dia, but who she was and who Dia has always been were never very compatible. But the dry wit, perpetual irritation with people, and tendency to mock anyone who annoyed us? Yeah, Grandma and I got along just fine. I would compare my sister to that stressed out Rabbit in Alice and Wonderland—always running around and driving people crazy, while Grandma and I were much closer to the Cheshire cat—more interested in coming and going as we pleased while everyone else went nuts.

*

At the moment, Grandma Dooley is still hanging from the ceiling in this hallucination, but at least my brain has furnished me with a tea cup. The cup is singing of course, but tea is tea.

“You have questions,” Grandma says, and sips her own brew from a hot pink skull.

“I do.”

The gnome print on her dress starts turning into dinosaurs. She nods at me.

“Well get on with it then dear. Ask your questions—we’ve not got all day.”

“Yes we do—you’re dead. It’s not like you’re on the clock.”

“I’m dead, and you’re doing very strong drugs. ‘We’ have as long as it takes your body to finish metabolizing them and pass out. So, ask your questions.”

“Why do I have superpowers?”

She raises a brow. It turns into a dolphin and swims off her face. “You don’t really care about that dear.”

“I don’t?” Her shoes are turning into fish.

“Of course not. The why and the how are not the problem. The question you _really_ want to ask me is—”

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

She nods. This is why I wanted to do this—drugs or not, any version of Grandma Dooley is going to be straight to the point.

“You’re asking questions you already know the answer to. You don’t have time for that.” Her fish-shoes start swimming around the ceiling, taking Grandma along like a cat on a Roomba. It makes it hard to focus.

“I am?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes dear. You’re going to help people. People with superpowers do the same thing.”

“You mean, like a comic book character? That’s not real.”

“Neither is this. But the damage to the kitchen was real. The incident with the Camaro was real.”

“I’m not a superhero. I don’t want to be a superhero.”

“And I didn’t want to go to church. I didn’t want to spend my retirement years volunteering to help strangers I didn’t even like. I didn’t want to spend forty years changing bed pans. And yet, that’s exactly what I did.”

“So you spent your life miserably helping people and now you’re telling me to do the same thing?”

“I’m telling you what I did.”

“You’re talking in circles! I’m asking you what I should do.”

“You’re asking yourself.”

“Well then I’m giving bad advice.”

She scoffs. “That’s obvious. But it also means you’ve already answered your own question.”

“If I go out and run around the streets like Batman, I’ll get hurt. I’ll get shot at. I’ll probably die.”

“Everyone dies Ruth. I died. Besides, Batman never had super powers.”

“So you— _I_ want to hurt myself? I’m not like that!” I don’t say, _I’m not like Dia_ , but of course it doesn’t matter that I didn’t say it outloud. This is all in my head. 

“You want to know what to do with all this power. And you’ve decided it will only make sense if I say it. So here I am. Saying it.”

“I won’t do it.”

Grandma Dooley shrugs.

“Then don’t.”

*

I wake up in a pile of dirty clothes vaguely aware of what happened, but it slips through my fingers so fast that I only get impressions of what was discussed.

I’m not positive of what I saw, but I _am_ positive that I didn’t like what was said.

I decide to pretend it never happened.

*

It doesn’t work.

*

I don’t know what I expected would come of a drug trip, but I suppose I was hoping for…I don’t know…personal realization? A glimpse into my inner soul? Prophetic destiny? Whatever it was I thought I might get, I was wrong.

What I get the next day is a hangover, and an annoyingly normal afternoon. I get up, and yep, there’s still a hot guy doing yoga on his balcony. Yep, my apartment is still trashed. Yep, I still have to do a load of laundry before I get to work. Yep, I still have super-strength and god knows what else.

The green tablets sit on the floor of my closet, partially dissolved, and my life keeps going.

*

It takes three pairs of pants being destroyed by a few skinny-jean hop shimmies before I give up and toss on my grim reaper costume, slather on some white face cream, and head to work. I gather up a crushed pop tart and a fistful of slim jims, _delicately_ pop open a can of monster, and tiptoe out of my apartment.

Some people would probably call out of work on the morning they destroyed their kitchen with their bare hands, but I am a broke little idiot who can barely afford her game subscriptions, so there’s no off days for me.

The bus is a weird experience, because in my get-up I already attract attention, but crushing the metal railing on the edge of the seat in front of me at a hard break is _not_ anything I want people to notice. Still, this is Las Vegas, and most people don’t stare too long, probably chalking it up to some weird performance art. I breathe a sigh of relief when my stop arrives.

The outside of the building looks like an average concrete office block, but the flashing neon above the door looks like a red and purple wound. It’s just dark enough to see it flash—“Til Death Do Us Part.”

My outfit makes much more sense inside—there’s a pretty woman in her mid forties dressed as a zombified Cher presiding over a funeral in the hall to my left, while an evil clown sets up the spider altar in the room to my right for a wedding in half an hour.

I slide behind a coffin-lid-turned desk and _carefully_ answer a phone shaped like a skull.

“Till Death Do Us Part—how may we bring you eternal peace?”

Yeah, my work is really fucking weird. 

I wince as I hang up on a telemarketer with enough force to hear something crack.

“Fucking hell,” I mutter.

A second later, Zombie Cher is in front of me, ushering out the funeral goers into the small dining room between the halls. She looks politely blank-faced, but I can see her tapping her shoe impatiently. The crowd finally clears the lobby and she can’t close the door behind them fast enough.

“Sweet Jesus, I’mma kill Merle.”

This is Roxanne. She’s my boss. Merle is her husband—the evil clown from earlier. He tends to overlap event bookings if he has to man the phone, which is why she hired me. Her desire to murder him is understandable.

“What did he do this time?”

She cusses like a sailor, already ripping off the huge feathered headdress and pulling out a blond wig from one of the prop chests scattered behind the desk.

“There’s a fifteen minute overlap between the Marshal funeral and the Jackson wedding. I need you to start setting up the casket and lay out the spider webs.

I nod and go to do exactly that, but I trip a little on my robe and rip the phone out of the wall.

Roxanne freezes, her half-done Marylin Monroe makeup pulling into a shocked expression.

“Jesus Ruth, what the hell?”

“Um…” the receiver has snapped in half in my hand, bits of plastic bone and wire going everywhere. Roxanne looks stunned. “I’m not…uh…feeling well.”

Her one blond eyebrow goes up. Yeah, that’s was stupid.

“Well…go…feel better in the back. You can pull out the extra guests or something instead.”

I nod, feeling a rush of gratitude for my boss—Roxanne is too practical to slow down, even if that _was_ really weird.

The “extra guests” are ancient anatomy skeletons dressed in cheap suits and gowns, meant to make a small event look busy, and the effect is incredibly disturbing.

Luckily, they’re decently sturdy, and easy to lay out, so nothing breaks. The rest of the day goes by in a blur, every move I make feeling like a giant toddler surrounded by porcelain. If Roxanne notices anything, she doesn’t say, and Merle leads the weddings without any glances in my direction.

Eventually, I can go home, stiff and so cramped from being _careful, so careful_ that I’m ready to pass out. I limp home, ignore the kitchen, and pass out on the giant beanbag chair in my living room, praying the world will be back to normal tomorrow.

It’s not.

*

I manage to get through the next day of work a little more calm and a little less flinching, and by nine that evening, I’m home again, lounging in my bean bag chair while I wait for the kale smoothie to blend and my Nintendo to warm up.

It’s a common myth that fat people _only_ eat unhealthy shit. Don’t get me wrong – I hate most veggies as much as your average six-year-old, but I know the benefits of a balanced diet and while I definitely don’t do portion control, I _do_ eat a buttload of healthy shit. Today for example, I’ve crammed about a pound of kale and three protein shakes into a blender, creating a nasty green sludge that will serve as dinner whenever I’m too lazy to cook.

I call it “The Ghost Busters’ Slime.”

I’m about to pinch my nose and start the process of chugging like a frat boy with a beer when my phone starts playing the theme song to the Twilight zone. I groan.

This is the third call today, and I know that ignoring her anymore is going to be a bigger headache in the long run. I sigh and answer.

“What do you want?”

Dia is three and a half years older than me with a wife, a degree, and two kids. She spends most of her time nagging people – a talent she applies to keeping her household (and the upper management of a law firm) running smoothly. However, whenever life decides it’s going well for a while, she’s left with little to do, and decides to turn her attention to her wayward little sister.

I hate it, but telling her to leave me alone or repeatedly hanging up on her will just end in a surprise visit – something not even our parents do.

“Have you looked at those brochures I sent you?”

“No.” They’re in the bottom of a dumpster somewhere, and I see no reason to lie to her about that.

She sighs. “Did you even open them before you tossed them out?”

“Nope.” I eye my Slime with distaste. There’s about a million better ways to prep a fast meal, and I know about ten of them, but I don’t know any faster ways to actually _eat_ kale without tasting it.

“That’s really wasteful.”

“Then you should really stop sending them.” I set the phone down, grab the pitcher, pinch my nose and swallow as much as I can. Gulp. Gasp for breath. Repeat.

Finally, the Slime is defeated, and I turn my attention back to my phone.

She’s still talking.

“…so much out there for you. I don’t know why you insist on staying…” she continues for a few minutes, long enough for me to pop a few multi vitamins and rinse my mouth out with a can of Monster. I have a Mario kart marathon ahead of me.

By the time she’s done lecturing me, I’ve already parked myself in my beanbag and started the game.

Dia has a guilt complex regarding our relationship that makes her want to fix my life, regardless of what I _actually_ want. She does things like send me college brochures, send me job postings that pay twice what I get now, reminds me that my health insurance coverage lets me get free checkups – all that crap. 

These are passive aggressive hints that I have _potential_ , that my life could be _better_ . Never mind that she’s the _only one_ who does this -- Mom and Dad love me and check that I’m still breathing and send me money to go back to Reno for the holidays. But Dia loves me and shows it by seeking out ways to piss me off.

This is why I don’t tell her about the Camaro. Or the kitchen. Or the Delphi. I don’t need her to freak out and drag me to the hospital for a thousand examinations and sixteen different melt downs.

I cut her off mid-sentence. “How’s Erin doing?” Erin is a year and a half old and the sweetest, easiest baby ever. He’s just barely starting to try and form full sentences, which the doctors say is a bit late but fine.

“He’s fine. Are you coming home for his party?”

“Fine is barely a descriptor, let alone an answer. And why are you asking? I always come to the parties.” Even if I have to put on face paint and pose for pictures.

She sighs. “Your nephew is learning the art of climbing playground equipment and _leaping off of it._ We’re lucky sandboxes are soft or there’d be broken bones instead of bruises.”

I laugh. Erin is sweet and quiet, but he’s also greased lightning and fearless.

“It’s not funny! I had to have Mari film him doing it to prove that it wasn’t _us_ giving him the bruises. We were half an inch from a CPS call!”

“Still funny. He’s definitely taking after you. And Sammy?”

“Encouraging him, which is even _less_ helpful.” A pause. “They miss you.”

I sober. “You’re doing fine,” I remind her. It sounds rote, because we’ve had this discussion about once a week every week since I moved out here. “Mari is a great Mom, and so are you. You can do this.”

“They still miss you.”

Truth is, there are times that I miss the kids so much it hurts, but it’s still for the best that I left – Dia wanted so badly to be a good mom, but she was never going to feel like she could step up as long as I was there. And really, with Mari’s income, they’ve got all the help she needs without me.

“I’ll be home for the party.”

“Do you want to come home sooner? I can pay for your ticket if that’s the issue.”

I groan. “Dia, if I wanted to come home, I’d tell you. Just leave it alone. Tell me about Sammy’s school -- what about the teachers? Do we like them or hate them?”

Dia pauses, but eventually she takes the bait. We talk for a while before I can convince her to leave me alone, and I remind her to stop calling every time she sees enrollment openings for community college.

“But you could just take a couple calc—”

“Bye D!” I hang up on her, and feel absolutely no guilt.

There are times my sister reminds me of a rabbit – high strung, always needing to gnaw on something, and forever with an ear to the ground. 

I lean back in the bag and I forget about Dia, the drugs, and pretty much everything else for the rest of the day. 

*

I decide that the best way to stop thinking about the weirdness in my life is to get out and get laid, so I pull up my favorite hookup app – “Cushin Pushin’.” It’s basically Tinder for chubby chasers, and there’s options ranging from Super Quickie to Marriage Material on the search parameters. Within a few hours of perusing, I’ve got three guys lined up for the night, and I decide to hit the corner store for a string of condoms before I head out for my little marathon.

Now, I don’t live in the best neighborhood. At best it’s seedy, at worst it’s…crappy? Definitely not the place you want to run around on your own if you’re a woman. I usually trust my size and a big hoodie to disguise myself as a fat dude, but on the off chance I get bothered, I keep a little pepper spray on me. But I’ve never needed it.

Until tonight.

I’m about halfway to the bus stop with a roll of trojans in my pocket and a lace thong beginning to bite into my hip when I hear someone scream.

I don’t really think about why or how or any of it, but I’m already running to the sound, feet beating on the pavement with a slapping, pounding noise that thuds in my ears. I’m at the mouth of an alley when I see her, the girl whose pants are around her ankles and with a ripped shirt and a guy twice her size. I don’t realize I’m moving with more speed – more force – than I’m used to until I almost skid past them trying to stop.

Her mouth is covered by his hand and he’s got the other one on a knife that might be trying to cut her underwear off, or might be trying to cut _her_ . Either way, there’s blood on her leg and she’s shaking.

This…this can’t be real, I think. This is a scene out of a damned movie. Some superpowered lunatic just _happens_ on an assault in the nick of time? Just _happens_ on a damsel in distress? No way. This is part of a dream or something. It’s not really real.

But…but real or not, that’s _blood_ and a _knife_ and she looks so _scared_ and, and, and…

I’m just standing here. So…real, not real, whatever. The girl still needs help.

There’s a metallic smacking noise and the guy drops like a rag doll.

I realize as I’m panting, frozen at the mouth of the alley, what’s happened, and something that feels far away seems to groan inside me.

I’d thrown the pepper spray can at him.

I fucking _threw_ my best weapon _at the attacker._

There’s something that wants to gibber hysterically bubbling in my gut, but that might also be nausea.

The girl is still standing there, pressed against the wall, bleeding, half naked, and shaking so hard I can see it from twenty feet away.

I walk towards her, hands up like someone’s got a gun to my back. My ankles feel weak, and I’m hyper aware of the space between my shoulders. I feel very, very nauseous, and it’s getting worse as I go down the alley.

“Fuck. Fuck-fuck-fuck.” The guy’s not moving. I definitely see some blood by his head. “Is he dead?” Did I just kill a man? My skin flushes with goosebumps and I suddenly feel very cold.

“You…” the girl is still shaking, but she slides down against the wall a bit to grab at her pants. Or whatever’s left of them.

“What happened?” I ask, and she flinches. It sounded kinda harsh – it's the same voice I used whenever I left a room and came back to find Erin crying and Sammy looking angry.

I should probably say something soft, something kind or soothing, but I’ve got nothing. The babbling thing in my gut is rising and I have to rush to the dumpster past the girl to throw up. I barely make it, and the stench of the trash at the bottom of the bin makes the heaving all the worse. I brace myself, heedless of the edges of the bin crumpling under my hand, soft as aluminum foil in my grip, though the metal squeals as it warps.

“J-Jesus.” I hear the girl say. Her teeth are chattering and between the two of us, there’s definitely some shock going around. “A-are you oka-hay?” She’s hiccupping and I realize she’s probably crying too, but all I can do is hold on to the dumpster and barf.

I don’t know how long it takes my body to stop dry heaving, but eventually there’s a light tap on my shoulder and I spin around. There’s definitely bile and a bit of spit on my lip, but the girl looks worse, her makeup running like dark blood from her eyes. We’re both shaking, but I pull off my hoodie without thinking too much about it.

Behind me, the guy groans, and I feel something relax in my stomach. Okay. He’s not dead, and she’s not…well, raped. I guess. I shove the hoodie at her.

“Put this on.” It’s not a suggestion. “Put this on and go home. Just…fuck, what are you doing out here? At night? Don’t you have any friends?”

I look around and see the little can of pepper spray on the edge of something dark and sticky. Maybe blood, maybe not, but either way, the little voice at the back of my head is reminding me of fingerprints and evidence and…and…fuck. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do but I’m done. I’m so done.

She pulls the hoodie on and refuses to look at me, still sniffling. Her contour looks like a hand smeared it and her pants – the rags of them at least – glitter around her legs. She was probably just coming home from a fun night with her friends. Maybe this is even her building, and she was just inches from safety when this guy attacked. Fuck. I know it’s just the shock and she’s just a human being wanting basic things like a night out, but there’s something panicked and mean in my brain that wants to lash out at her. It’s angry at her for being here, for interrupting my night, for screaming and being alone when I know, _I know_ , it’s not her fault this happened. But I want to scream and snarl and rage at her for being a relatively attractive woman in the dark at night, for putting _me_ through this.

I have enough sense to realize that this is all just shock and panic and a massive amount of panicked hysteria, and I wisely keep my mouth shut. She doesn’t say thank you, and neither of us talk. I don’t ask for my hoodie or offer to walk her home, but we part ways and I forget about the condoms in my pocket.

I’m not really horny right now.

*

When I get home I collapse on my bean bag so hard that it busts on the side. I don’t even flinch, just stare at the ceiling and pant, feeling the world spin a little.

It’s so stupid – I’ve no idea why I’m freaking out. _She_ was the one who almost got hurt. Who _did_ get hurt. I’m just the one who walked in on it. So why am I panicking?

 _You know why_. That little voice in my head is starting to sound an awful lot like Grandma Dooley. I turn my head and stare at the closet. My closet where I keep my clothes. Where a few little green pills are sitting on the floor. Where another Delphi trip might be waiting for me.

I lock myself back into the dark among my dirty pants and smelly shoes and run my fingers through my hair, tugging a little.

“Fuck, this is stupid, this is stupid,” I chant under my breath and grope in the dark until I find a pill, and bite half the thing off. It still tastes nasty, and that was probably more than I should have taken, but fuck if I care; I’m going down this rabbit hole and I refuse to come up until this is settled.

“Grandma!” I start calling. “Grandma Dooley come out! I took the pill, I helped someone, so get out here and talk to me!”

I take a brief second to wonder what my neighbors might be thinking of all of this—hopefully the clothes muffle the sounds of me yelling for my grandmother in a dark closet.

Fuck, my life is veering off the “straight, narrow, and normal” route pretty quickly.

“Grandma!” I grope for a light and try not to hit anything too hard, but of course there’s probably going to be a dent when I get up. I’m crouched on a pile of what might be winter sweaters right now.

The light comes on and with a hiss, my pupils dilate. I see bursts of purple, until they start to morph into colorful cartoon shapes.

I think the drugs are starting to kick in. Hopefully.

“Grandma? You better show up.”

“Hello dear.” I swivel in my seat on the floor and—yep, there’s Grandma. Admittedly she’s dressed in a costume of the Statue of Liberty this time, and I think her shoes might be made of teeth, but at least she’s on the floor instead of the ceiling. She hefts her book in one arm and I try to ignore what might be the cast of Dexter’s laboratory running around her.

“You know, I’m starting to like the idea of a séance more and more,” I grumble. There’s no sensation of melting in my own body, which I think is a win. She smiles at me, and I see the tiny crucifix on her neck start to move.

“Fuck, Grandma, what am I going to do?”

“Language dear. Having a crisis is not a reason to forget your manners.”

“It should be.” As I watch the tiny Jesus on his cross begins to grow, faster and faster until a full grown man in a loincloth is hanging from a necklace off the front of my grandmother. Gramma doesn’t so much as flinch.

“Sup,” says Jesus. He’s still not put his feet down, hanging like he’s on a rope above a chasm instead of three inches from my closet’s laminate flooring. His hair is on fire.

“Sup dude. Get off my grandma.”

He gets down and meanders over to sit next to me. He’s mostly naked still, and I admire that my hallucination has given him great abs.

“So what’s up dudette?” His fingers have turned into carrots and he bites one off with a crisp crunch. “What’re we chatting about?”

“Shouldn’t you know?” I ask. “You’re from my brain.”

“She has a dilemma,” Grandma says. She’s no longer dressed like Liberty, but rather, she’s become a unicorn centaur. Apparently my brain doesn’t ask how she can fit into the closet, preferring to make it look like we’re in a field of snow now.

I’m still sitting on lumpy shoes, and I try to remember how much the drug dealer said was _too_ much.

“Eh, What kind of dilemma?” Burning Jesus is still eating his fingers, and my grandma huffs.

“You know the one—to step up or not to step up. She has to decide; does she go out into the world and offer herself as a sacrifice knowing she’s the one best equipped to help, or does she go back to her life and continue to bury her head in the sand. A stupid question to waste on a rather expensive acid trip, but she’s always been too stubborn to accept the answer on the first try.”

Jesus nods and pats me on the shoulder. “You have great power. Here’s the responsibility!”

“The fuck? Did you just quote _Spiderman_ at me? My life is not a comic book!”

“Don’t raise your voice to our lord and savior,” Grandma scolds. A parade of elves the size of my thumb are marching over her rump, and Jesus casually offers her his carrot fingers to munch.

I officially hate getting high.

“Grandma, the answer to getting super strength can’t be to put on a cape and run around shouting about ‘truth, justice, and the American way!’ It’s ridiculous!”

“Why not?” she says around a mouthful of carrot.

“Because that’s under copyright?” Jesus offers.

“Because it’s not real life!”

“Neither is super strength. Neither is ripping a man out of a burning car, or using a can of pepper spray to knock out an assailant. And yet it’s what you decided to do. It’s what you’ve done. Everything that’s happened—that’s still happening—is real life now. And whatever you decide to do next will still be just as real.”

This time it’s not my grandmother saying that. It’s me. Well, a version of me, maybe six or seven years old in a yellow coat and rain boots. I look creepy, staring out of my weird corner of darkness where there shouldn’t be any, because we’re standing in the snow in daylight.

The snow melts and now it’s just an empty field of rocks.

This trip is becoming less and less helpful.

“No one’s saying this is going to work,” little-me says. “And no one’s saying you’ve got to do it forever.”

“—But maybe you could try it?” Says Jesus. He’s scratching his butt with the non-carrot hand. “Maybe you’ll trip and fall into something that works better, but for now, no one else is going to do this.”

“No one else is going to do the right thing. Whatever that might be. So maybe you should hurry up and decide what the right thing to do is and get on with it,” Grandma finishes.

“I’m not…entirely sure you’re making sense anymore.” Okay, _now_ I feel like I’m melting.

“None of this will ever make sense dear,” Grandma sighs. “But at least you might make up your mind.”

*

When I wake up, I’m half in, half out of the closet, face down and very, very hung over.

I spit, tasting something like boots and dirt. Groaning, I flop onto my back, hitting something near my head.

It’s a boot. A boot with teeth marks in it.

Well…that explains the taste.

*

Okay, okay, so maybe a drug trip isn’t the best way to get advice on something like this, but whatever. I’m going to run with it for now. So, presuming that I decide to…well…go be a vigilante? Or something? Whatever. I’m trying not to think about the exact definition (and legal ramifications therein), but rather, let’s focus on what needs to be done.

So. Planning. To fight crime. Or, at the very least, save people from assholes late at night on their way home.

I guess the first place to start is figuring out what exactly I can do. Like, a super-powered strongman test? Or a fitness assessment for the Hulk?

The first thing I do is go online and google “strongman tests.” That digs up “strength athletics” on Wikipedia, which takes me to Highland Games, World’s Strongest man, and a dizzying rabbit hole of information.

I resurface about an hour later with the general gist: big strong people get together and generally throw, drag, drop, carry, and toss heavy shit around a field. Sounds easy enough. I pull up the hall of fame for both the Highland Games and the Worlds’ Strongest Man’s websites, and make a list.

  1. Giant hammer throw: 22lbs thrown as far as possible into the distance. World record? 284 ft.
  2. Shot put: throw a rock of about 26lbs as hard and far as you can into the distance. World record? 75 ft and 10 inches.
  3. Tug o’ War: Eight big burly guys yank a rope (and, I assume, make lots of dick jokes) back and forth until one pulls the other over the edge. 



Seriously, how does anyone even talk about that without laughing like twelve-year-old boys? I cross that off the list and compare it to the Arm Over Arm Pull or something like it. The world record comes out to something like, 150 kg down a 20 meter course in less then seven seconds, but I’m more interested in how heavy 150 kg feels.

  1. Then there’s the Fridge Carry, which sounds ridiculous, with a world record of 450kg carried 20 meters in about 19.6 seconds. Or something. I’m not sure I understand why they’re timing it like that, but I’m going to write it down.
  2. The Giant Dumbbell Press, which is about as straightforward as it gets, and was recorded at 315lbs at its height, and finally,
  3. The Farmer’s Walk, which seems very awkward but interesting all the same.



Once I’ve made my list to try myself against, I make what I call, the “Shit Hits the Fan” list. It’s generally a list of things I thinkmight be helpful to learn to do, or at least, things that I should try, though they sound about as ridiculous as the Strongman tests. Things like,

\- Ripping doors off cars of various makes and models.

\- Crushing door handles with one hand.

\- Doing a fireman’s carry with as many people as I can carry out at one time. Like, three maybe?

\- Throwing a projectile with enough accuracy that I don’t worry about killing someone if I bean them in the head.

\- And, just for shits and giggles? Endurance: Testing how far, fast and long I can run, leap, and climb.

Absolutely _none_ of this sounds like fun, but I fortify myself with a couple of Kale Slimes and about three pounds of chicken smothered in ranch before I start.

First things first: Where the fuck am I supposed to go to do this?

Follow me on this--There are literally no gyms I can think of that will have weights big enough for me to test these out. And even if there were, it takes exactly one juiced up muscle head who doesn’t think women should be as strong as men to see me there, remember what I was doing, and then see me in the news on the one day I fuck up to make a connection.

And I don’t want anyone to make connections. I want to go under the radar as a weird, urban legend that goes on the news some weeks like bigfoot and alligators in the sewer. But I also know that I have a tendency to panic, and fuck up when I do. Which means, in the most round-about way I can think of, I need somewhere else to measure my skills.

So I decide to break into a junkyard.

*

Now, by “break in” I don’t mean what most people would mean; I’m not cutting bolts or breaking chains, and (because this place is too cheap for a security system or a guard) the most I’m doing is setting off some motion sensor lights and maybe getting recorded on a camera as I launch myself over the fence while wearing a ski mask.

So, test one: Can I leap a building?

Result: Probably not, but I _can_ do a running jump that propels my ass into the air much higher and harder than I would like. We’re talking like, twelve, maybe thirteen feet directly into the air. With no idea how to land. Or where to land. And because it’s dark, I can't see where I was going.

So I land on a car. _Face, fucking, first!_

Test two: how long does it take me to recover after I’ve taken a hit?

For this experiment, the results are a little mixed. I’m not in pain so much as my entire body feels like it’s been rearranged from the act of _flying through the air_ , and then landing so hard on the top of a gutted Toyota that my bones are shaking. I’ve knocked the wind out of myself, and even after I can breathe again, it takes me something like, five minutes to groan and get up.

Super jumps I decide, are quite possible, _and_ quite possibly the most unpleasant thing I’ve done to date.

Now, test three: I’m in a brightly lit junkyard on the outskirts of the worst parts of town, and I’ve just made as much noise as a car crash. Partially because I actually crashed into a car, but the alarm on this thing must not work, because thank god it’s not going off in my ear. However, I take the moment to rip the door of the car and jump into the front seat.

Then I hold _really, really still._

After about six or seven minutes, the motion activated lights have turned off, and I don’t hear the sounds of anyone coming, so I decide to poke around. I move slowly, trying to keep out of the way of the sensors and keep the lights off, my phone out for a flashlight and thankfully, undamaged. Finally, I find what I’m looking for: a very, _very_ ugly old fridge.

I find it mostly by smell, but it’s all I can find in the dark, so I decide to give it a whirl. I set down my phone, hold my breath against what might be the stench of rotten lasagna, and carefully start to lift up the empty old fridge.

It’s…well…surprisingly easy. Huh. Awkward, yes, because trying to get a good grip on the smooth edges makes it hard to get leverage but—

A creaking, crunching sound comes from under my hands, and suddenly it’s much easier to keep my grip. I don’t think I need to see very well to know I’ve just crushed the edges into a hand hold. I try not to groan; I don’t know how likely people are to search hand prints in metal for fingerprints, but I’m very glad I’m wearing gloves.

I lift the fridge and carry it over to a corner behind a tall pile of broken toilets, where hopefully the sensors won’t see.

The lights don’t go on, and I let out a little prayer. And a fart. A prart?

I find a bunch of bricks and fill the fridge with about thirty of them. Then I find my hand holds again and (still trying _not_ to get a whiff of the interior) pick it up.

Definitely more difficult, but still not very hard for me to haul around.

Okay, test four: fridge carry. I guess that’s a pass? I can’t find any more bricks but I think I’m confident that I could lift more, so that’s good.

I check my phone – so, most bricks are about three and a half pounds, and…well okay, thirty of those is a hundred and five pounds. A quick search yields the weight of a typical fridge – um, around two hundred and thirty pounds, maybe only a hundred and eighty without the door but…but that means…

I put down the phone and pick up the fridge again. Shake it a little for feel.

Yep, I’m confidently lifting at least two hundred and eighty pounds without trying. At all.

Ohhhhkayyyy…

I…I want to make it clear that I’ve never tried this before. Or gone to the gym or lifted weights or…or…

Well, I’ve never _tried_ to be strong. I mean, when we had to move Dia in and out of places, or when I have to get groceries up and down stairs, I never think it’s too hard. So…maybe I’ve been strong for a long time? Either way, it seems weird that I would either sprout the ability to cradle 450 pounds in my arms like a doll, or go my whole life without noticing this?

I don’t know what to think. But _– the why and the how aren’t important_. That’s what Grandma Dooley said. And I kinda think she was right. Or, I guess I was right. The point isn’t that I have powers, it’s what I’m going to do with them.

I try a few more things, only setting off the lights twice before I decide to leave – this time by slightly gentler means: instead of leaping straight into the air and hoping I land on something soft, I lean the fridge against the fence, pull myself on top of it, and _then_ jump over.

I can feel my knees creak under me. Ow. That’s…not gentle on your joints, is it?

So as I’m heading home, I do a little research, and my info comes out like this:

I can’t fully lift a car, but I can kick it over. And shove it over. And lift the back of it. Which I guess isn’t too bad. Maybe it’s something I can work up to? It might be helpful if this strength isn’t static, but rather something I can grow over time.

The frame of your average car weighs roughly 4,079 pounds, give or take. The husk of the gutted truck I was fucking around with was probably a bit lighter with it’s tires, engine, and innards mostly gone. The strongest feats of strength are usually back presses, and the strongest back press ever completed was 6270 pounds by a guy named Paul Anderson. This guy took the record for crazy strong from a French Canadian named Louis Cyr, who did about 4337 pounds, if you believe both of them, since Guinness seems to have washed their hands of any record they can’t rigorously test.

Another thing about Cyr and Anderson? Both of them kicked it at a pretty early age – 49 and 61 respectively – because their kidneys decided to tap out. Admittedly I’m not sure at this point why that was, but it makes me nervous. Kinda a fun little thing to keep sitting at the back of my brain.

According to reports, Cyr picked up something like 500 lbs with just his pinkie finger. That seems to me to be more a test of how well his pinkie was attached to his hand rather than a feat of strength, but still, something to aspire to I guess? I eyeball the hole of a manhole cover on the way home, but decide against it; even if I could lift it, I’d rather leave it be than find out if my finger can get stuck in one. That strikes me as something _less_ than pleasant to have to smuggle home.

Another thought crosses my mind and I groan. I’m confident that I can out do most of the records out there just as I am, but if I want to get up to the levels that Anderson and Cyr reached? I’m going to have to _work out_.

“Oh fuck…”

*

The next morning I load up my backpack with assorted heavy items from around the apartment and take a bus out to the very edge of town. They let me off at the base of Gold Strike Hot Springs hiking trails, and start the soul sucking process of scouting the area. It takes something like two hours of meandering around bouldery hills and scrubby foliage, but eventually I find an area that seems fairly secluded and pull out my notepad, egg timer, 500 feet of laundry line, and a few other tools.

It’s hot, disgusting, and sweaty work, but after three hours of hard labor, I collapse under the February sun with some satisfaction. I groan and flop over to check my numbers.

I don’t know about other fat people, but for me, running is the most uncomfortable exercise I can do to myself. Yes I know, there’s lots of fat people who don’t mind running, but for me all I can feel is the impact of all my skin and weight flapping around. What I presume is a decent amount of flesh smacks together with a pretty good amount of force, and the thudding impact of each running step feels kinda terrible. But then again, that’s probably just me.

Point is, I _despise_ running. Or at least, slow running. Jogging. Whatever. But sprinting? That’s okay sometimes. When you go as fast and hard as you can and use everything you’ve got to move yourself forward? Meh. That’s not always bad.

So I take my laundry line, tie it to a tree, and run with the other end as far and hard as I can in fifteen seconds. Then I stop, go back, and measure what I got.

Then I do it again. And again. And once more for good measure.

Yep. As of right now, I’m only ten kilometers under Usain Bolt’s top speed. That is _definitely_ not natural.

It strikes me that if any Olympic athletes ever found out what I can do, a few of them might be a bit pissed. After all, it’s kinda unfair that I can do this without exercising, and they have to eat salads and train all day.

Probably another reason to wear a mask when I go out.

The rest of my numbers are equally unusual. I can do a running jump that gets me about twenty eight feet forward, though my measurements aren’t great because I definitely don’t stick the landing, so I try to go off the edge of the craters my feet leave in the dust.

Another fun fact: nothing in my body seems to be broken, which I guess is…definitely good? But my skin still doesn’t like this. I’ve got all the same cuts and bruises I expected, but at least I haven’t felt anything crack.

Small mercies I guess.

I take my numbers and limp back to the front of the park, just in time for the last bus of the day. The driver gives me a face and I can imagine what I must look like – covered in dust, dirt, and debris from landing in a few bushes (though no cacti, and thank the universe again). I probably look like I got hit with the same movie magic they use on Mad Max characters.

I probably don’t smell too good either.

I pay my fee and take the ride home in silence, wondering what to do with my numbers. The scrapes and bruises prove I’m not invulnerable, but they also prove that I’m better off than I thought. I’m strong, I’m pretty hard to break, and now I know where I stand; when faced with a guy with a knife, I’m pretty sure I can win. With a gun though?

I sigh and lean back in my seat.

I really doubt I’m bulletproof.


End file.
